Early Access Release Date

As a result, this will be the last major update posted to Kickstarter, though we will continue to post development updates on Steam and our Forums/Website.

We’ve thanked you a lot over the last 10 months and we’re going to do it one more time, THANK YOU.

Those of you who've been with us since the opening Alpha Weekend in April can attest that the game has improved markedly since then, we're excited with the progress made but even more so for what lies ahead.

Releasing to Early Access will expand our resources and allow us to reach even higher. We plan to repay your support the only way we know how, to continue to pour all of our time and energy into making the best game we possibly can.

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As we move into Early Access we want to share with you some of the planned additions to the game. Below we have outlined our high level roadmap for the coming months.

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Early Access Roadmap

Intro

First things first, we want to remind everyone that Days of War is still in development. Anything in the game now is subject to change and most of it will be changing. This includes art, animations, sound, FX, maps, etc. We will adjust the priority of changes based on what we hear from you, so please continue to give us your feedback.

Maps

We are announcing our next 2 official maps, one in the sun, one in the snow. Names are placeholder.

dow_italy

Gamemode: Domination

The first is a map from the D-Day invasion of Italy and takes place on the hilly Italian coastline. We've introduced a bit of verticality with this map but kept the layout fairly traditional.

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dow_foy

Gamemode: Detonation

This map is based on the Siege of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium in late 1944, as shown in Band of Brothers. Allies spawn in the forest in foxholes and must assault the town. Axis must defend three objectives, a tank, a flak88 and a howitzer that are all capable of shelling the Allies.

We will be adding at least 2 more official maps before final release (bringing the total to 8).

We have had many great suggestions for map ideas since we began, and have created an official thread over on the forums to solicit more ideas in a consolidated place. If you have previously suggested a map idea on the forums or elsewhere, feel free to post it there again. We may put some ideas up to vote. Ideas can be simply concepts/settings, abstract layouts drawn in MS paint, or both!

Map Editor

After we hit Early Access we want to get the map editor out ASAP. We know there's a lot of untapped creativity out there ready to be unleashed. Building maps in UE4 is already pretty simple but we want to do everything possible to make the process pain free. We’ve looked at how other games (both UE4 and others) treat modding and map making and we’re cherry picking the best attributes for our editor.

We've also begun work on Steam Workshop integration which will act as the hub for all custom maps.

Sound

Sounds will be one of the most important areas of improvement over the coming months. Sound in an online FPS is a complex beast and we will continue to improve our sounds until our full release.

Weapon fire polish - We want to add more pop to our weapon sounds and improve the overall feeling of satisfaction when firing.

Spacialization and Occlusion - Because our sounds exist in 3D space there are many quirks we need to polish to make sure the sound attenuation is natural.

Shot and Hit feedback - We want to improve the feedback of scoring hits/kills on other players and vice versa. A preliminary version of this should be making its way into the game soon for testing.

Voiceover - We aim to have a basic version of American and German voice commands soon after EA launch.

Ambience - up until now a lot of our maps have been dead silent, we are adding subtle ambient noises to make it feel more like a war, though you will be able to disable these noises should you wish.

VOIP - Unfortunately our game engine does not currently have native support for VOIP, we will be working with third party providers to get VOIP in DoW as soon as we can.

Animations

In the Animation arena we’ve established a robust locomotion system but the animation asset quality is no where near final and a lot of updates are planned after the EA launch for an 'Animation V2' update.

We want to improve our core locomotion and also make weapon actions more detailed with the goal of making it easy to spot what a specific class on the battlefield is doing.

We also plan to improve the posture and rigging of our players to look more natural when moving.

Characters

One major area of priority for us right now is player visibility. We want to make it easier to pick people out on our maps, especially at distance. We plan to start by tweaking the character models themselves as well as textures and lighting in key areas of our maps.

New Factions

We've finished the initial character models and most of the first batch of weapons.

British

Lee-Enfield No 4

Sten Mk II

Bren LMG

Lee-Enfield No 4 Sniper

Lewis .303 Mk. I Model 1915

PIAT

Webley Mk IV

Mills Bomb

Russian

Mosin-Nagant 1891/30

SVT-40

PPS SMG (PPS 43)

PPSh
-41

Mosin-Nagant 1891/30 Sniper

Degtyaryov

RPG-1

TT-30

F1 Grenade

1st Airborne "Red Devils"

Red Army Infantry

Bren LMG

Mosin Nagant

Lewis .303

Mills Bomb

PIAT

Webley Revolver

The British and Russian factions will be added during the early access period, though we have yet to finalize which maps we will be launching the new factions with so we welcome suggestions!

Stability and Optimization

Bugs are bad, and FPS are good.

The stability and performance of our game is paramount to our success and we will not stop until we’ve squashed every annoyance and eked out every bit of performance we can from our engine. This includes tedious efforts like completely rewriting all the code for our weapon system (currently in process), and experimenting with making tweaks to the core engine to tailor optimizations to our game.

Progression and Stat Tracking Systems

We're finishing work on our backend frameworks for stat tracking and progression. We are going to start with a basic version and iterate from there based on what we learn.

Version 1 will include a basic Round End screen with summary stats and an xp progression system. Version 2 will have persistent global stats and a cosmetic unlock system.

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We want to reiterate our promise to you that any progression system we make will be purely cosmetic and able to be turned off for competition.

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Competitive Mode / Matchmaking

Having played organized 6v6 scrimmage matches during the course of testing, we know competitive play is a blast and a completely different experience from 16v16. We want to make it easier to get a 6v6 pickup game and play under a competitive ruleset.

Making a matchmaking system is a significant effort, but we've always kept it in mind. Realistically we see the competitive side of DoW evolving over time in 3 main stages

1. Create a pre-configured 6v6 mode for server admins

2. Create a matchmaking system for players or groups to find 6v6 matches

3. Implement a CSGO style competitive ranking system to facilitate more even matches

Outro

We are putting a link to our roadmap in the game client so that players can easily access our development schedule and provide feedback to shape what our priorities should be.

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Stress Test #2

This weekend we are going to be doing another stress test on Sunday at 3pm EST. We learned a ton from our last one where we had 75+ players in one server and have made some changes to improve stability at this scale.

We will send an email out with full details later this week.

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Steam Reviews

You may have noticed you can already submit a review for Days of War on our store page. We encourage you to share your opinions of the game and our studio so prospective players have some data to make their decision to purchase on.

A big concern when purchasing early access titles is how committed the developers are to the game's success. We hope we've demonstrated over the last 10 months that we are deeply committed to making a polished, fun, online WW2 shooter and we won't rest until we've achieved this goal.

Days of War started out as a hobby project a few years ago because we personally wanted an updated version of a classic style shooter. The scope of the project has grown significantly since then, but that original motivation still remains.

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Community Hosted Servers

We are going to begin rolling out our dedicated server app immediately. If you haven't already discussed interest in hosting a server with us, send an email to contact@drivenarts.com.

We've partnered with Host Havoc to offer monthly server rentals on a per slot basis. Please contact them if you are interested in renting a game server.

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We are 2 weeks away from Early Access Launch and will be adding as many finishing touches as we can by the 26th.